'The Son' is a powerful parable

By SEAN AXMAKER, SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, July 24, 2003

The third feature of documentary filmmaking veterans Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes ("La Promesse" and "Rosetta") turns on a doughy, middle-age carpentry instructor at a youth rehab center, Olivier (Olivier Gourmet, who won the best actor award at Cannes for his impassive performance).

Shot entirely in unblinking, unbroken takes with a handheld camera that hangs on Olivier like sweat (often resting on his knotty neck), this discomfortingly intimate film studies his dull but acutely observant eyes and numbly slack mouth, waiting for him to betray emotions locked deep inside.

The Dardennes don't explain, they show, whether it be Olivier's rapport with his troubled students (his apparent gruffness proves to be direct and respectful) or his relationship with ex-wife Magali (Isabella Soupart), where the awkward mix of intimacy and polite discomfort speaks volumes about their painful history.

For that reason I won't reveal the exact relationship between Olivier and his sullen new teenage student Francis (Morgan Marinne), who arrives at the center after five years in juvenile hall. Watching the boy through Olivier's eager eyes is among the film's hard pleasures.

Francis has the battered face of a street survivor: a lumpy boxer's nose, ridges of eyebrows like scar tissue, crescent bags under his drowsy eyes like healed slashes, a clenched look of defiance that could be a permanent mask from his years inside. Some act in his past damaged Olivier, yet he practically adopts the now abandoned Francis.

The Dardennes's masterful casting and austere style amplify this simple but powerful parable. Olivier's obsessive attentions to young Francis are alternately creepy and poignant, but when the two confront each other, vulnerable and raw, it's beautifully human.